Dispatched
by L.M.Lewis
Summary: Another holiday story . . . of sorts.


These characters are not mine and don't deserve the abuse I heap upon them.

Rated: B (Bathetic)

**Author's note**: One in a continuing series of things which are Owl's fault. ;-)

Kathy is, of course, _One of the Girls from Accounting_, who I long-ago married off to McC. She's racked up many a frequent flier mile in my previous stories: 'This Far and No Further', 'Time Out', and, most recently, 'Flight Fishing'.

**Dispatched**

By L. M. Lewis

The call in the middle of the night awoke Hardcastle from a sound sleep and had him reaching, grumbling, for the phone.

"Whatisit?"

The news was both unexpected and dreadful.

"I'll be there," he muttered, juggling the phone and squinting at the alarm clock—3:50 am. "St. Mary's? The SICU—that's on the third floor, right?" As if he had to ask.

He'd hung up and was already in motion before he had even thought through the ramifications. This was all the automated response of frequent practice.

00000

As he maneuvered the truck through the almost non-existent traffic he thought about the last time he had seen Mark, just eight hours earlier. He'd seemed happy, almost buoyant. He'd intended to swing by the accounting firm where Kathy worked, and take her out for dinner. It was their anniversary.

And now this, tragedy in the midst of joy.

He pulled into the lot by the after-hours door and parked the truck. A light rain was falling, barely more than a mist, but enough to excuse the dampness on the man's cheeks. He strode toward the doors, determined not to put off the inevitable.

00000

The sounds and smells of the hospital, visceral and strangely familiar, assaulted him. It was never anything but mid-day within, the constant, urgent human need to salvage life, most desperate when it was at the greatest risk of falling short. He stopped briefly at the security desk and was greeted by the night guard, who quickly detected his mood and directed him to the elevator.

The SICU waiting room was quiet and dimly-lit by comparison with the main floor. In one corner, on a sofa that had been there since the Nixon Administration, illuminated by a puddle of light from a table lamp, sat McCormick, slumped and dejected. He lifted his eyes briefly at the judge's approach.

"How's she doing, kiddo?"

"Not good," he said. It was hardly more than a whisper. "They still have her in surgery, but they said she'll come here afterwards, if she makes it."

"She'll make it," Hardcastle said bluffly. "She's a fighter. She's got a lot to live for."

"I dunno, Judge. You didn't see her—how she looked when they brought her in." He shook his head dolefully. "I didn't think a person could lose that much blood and still live."

"What the hell happened?" Hardcastle asked gruffly. "I thought you were going out for Chinese."

Mark looked a little unfocused, as though dim sum belonged to another world, a world of happiness and spring rolls and fortune cookies.

"We never made it," he said in a voice that was little more than a sigh. "We almost did."

_'Almost'—the kid's life was made up of almosts. Of course there'd been a certain number of might-have-beens, and the occasional what-if?_

"—a paper cut."

The judge became suddenly aware that he had been lost in internal monologue and had missed a significant plot development. He frowned. He didn't want it to seem as though he hadn't been paying attention. He cleared his throat gently. "Ah, yes, must've been a bad one."

Mark looked momentarily bemused. "No," he finally said, "it was just a paper cut, you know, like you get when you pick a piece of paper up too quickly. You can even get them from cardboard."

Hardcastle nodded. He'd had those.

"But it did bleed some, and she didn't have any band-aids in her desk." Mark's expression clouded momentarily. "I _told _her to keep a box there, but you know Kathy, never a moment to get to the drug store, always one more column to add up."

"Sometimes life makes time for us," the judge said sagely.

"Yeah," Mark sighed, "death, too," he added darkly.

"Don't talk like that," Hardcastle remonstrated. "They can do a lot these days with paper cuts, even complicated ones." He frowned. "What happened, blood poisoning? Lock jaw?"

McCormick gave him a confused look. "Judge, it's only been eight hours."

"So, it wasn't the cut? Then how'd she wind up here?"

Another sigh. "Well, she kept bleeding, like I said, even though she held a piece of tissue on it a couple of times, and she didn't want to get little red fingerprints all over the Danhough account."

"'Course not."

"It's a big account. Real estate, lots of holdings."

Hardcastle frowned. "Heard the name before. They've got some casino action in Vegas." His face darkened. "Oh, God, Kathy was on to something. Why didn't she tell us?"

"No," Mark said, "nothing like that." Then he frowned, too. "I don't think."

"Not an attempted hit?" Hardcastle asked, a little disappointedly.

McCormick shook his head and then said, "She decided to go down to personnel. That's where they keep the first aid kit. It's on the first floor."

"My God," Hardcastle breathed. "An elevator accident. How many floors up does she work? Twelve, isn't it? Corrupt elevator inspectors. Had a case involving a ring of them once. Some cash under the table and they'd sign those certificates without even going in the building. Unconscionable."

"No, um, the elevator works fine." Mark said. "Kinda slow sometimes."

"She took the stairs? She fell?"

The younger man shook his head.

"A disgruntled former employee came in and shot up the personnel office while she was in there getting her band-aid?"

"Now that'd be some dramatic irony for you," Mark mused thoughtfully. Then he added a definite, "_No_, and I think maybe you ought to just let me tell the story. I was trying to keep this short. You know, two maybe three pages." He sighed. "Too late for that."

Hardcastle subsided, looking a little contrite. Then he muttered, "If ya'd stop doing all that sighing and get _on_ with it."

Mark scowled at him, sighed one more time, and forged ahead. "She got there and they were out of band-aids. They have a lot of paper cuts in the accounting business. Some stapler injuries, too."

Hardcastle kept his mouth shut.

"So, she decided, since she was all the way down by the lobby, she would go over to the drugstore and get a box of her own." He sighed again. "She knew I was coming soon, and she must've been hurrying back from there, so she wouldn't miss me. She didn't go all the way to the corner, to cross by the light." He looked suddenly aghast. "I suppose in a way this is all my fault. If I hadn't insisted on Chinese—"

"Come on, kid, you can't blame yourself for this. Everybody has to eat."

Mark nodded dully, not looking convinced. "It was a Volkswagen minibus. Aquamarine and white with a Grateful Dead decal on the back. Hit and run."

"You saw it?"

"I was just pulling up when it happened." Mark gasped quietly as if he was mentally reviewing the horrific scene yet again.

"You got a plate?"

"Partial: foxtrot, tango, seven. Then he lost me in traffic." He frowned. "The Volvo doesn't have a lot of pick-up and it maneuvers like a tank."

"It's a start. How many minibuses can there be in Southern California? And," he suddenly recollected himself, "what about Kathy?"

Mark's frown took on an edge of even more guilt. "Well, when I got back, the ambulance was there. They were loading her up."

"You got a chance to see her, to talk to her?"

"Yeah, she said I had to be brave and she wanted me to go on living, and all that."

"Well, yeah, you gotta, for Matt's sake." The judge looked around quizzically. "Where is he, anyway?"

"Boarding school," Mark said flatly.

"Ah . . . but I just saw him two days ago."

"We'd been talking about it for a while. Since the Kool-Aid incident."

"Oh." Hardcastle sat quietly for a moment. "Makes sense, I suppose. Especially for a single parent." He flushed in a moment of embarrassment.

"It's okay to say it out loud," Mark said gently. "Won't make it less real to not talk about it."

"Hasn't happened _yet_, though."

"We both knew it, Kathy, too. It was inevitable. There's only so many accounting conferences a person can go to a year. Eventually her number would be up."

As if to punctuate this thought, the door from the SICU opened at that moment and a green-clad figure stepped through, still wearing a surgical cap. He looked weary, and not like a bearer of good tidings.

"You are Mrs. McCormick's family?" he asked.

Mark nodded wordlessly. All color had left his face.

"I'm Dr. Bederman, the surgeon."

"How is she?" Hardcastle did the talking.

"Alive, for now."

"How serious?"

"A car radio antenna through the right chest cavity is never a trivial injury." The surgeon looked grim. "We've done all we can."

"Will she make it?"

"There was rust. It was a '65. Who knows where it's been. I'd have to say it's in the hands of God."

"Can we see her?"

"Give them a few moments to settle her in." The surgeon nodded back toward the unit behind him. "Someone will come for you."

"Thank you, doctor."

"No problem," the surgeon flashed a quiet, kind smile. "It's just a job for me."

00000

They'd barely settled back into their seats when a woman in blue scrubs appeared, asking for Mark. She ushered them in to the inner sanctum of the SICU, past a series of glass-walled rooms to the one at the end of the hallway. Mark's steps seemed reluctant. Hardcastle offered him an encouraging hand on the elbow, ready to put a quick halt to any swooning.

She was there, arranged in the middle of plethora of machines and wires and tubes. Her face was the color of alabaster, except for one small and tasteful bruise on the right temple. Her dark hair was clustered on the pillow. There was no unsightly endotracheal tube, no ventilator. Hardcastle supposed that was either a good sign or a concession to the drama of the moment.

She looked as though she was merely asleep. Mark moved in, closer to the bed, awkward among all the strange pieces of equipment. He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Hardcastle recognized Kathy's glasses, one lens broken and the bridge held together with what appeared to be band-aids.

As the younger man slipped them on her face, her eyes opened slowly and the slightest shadow of a smile graced her lips.

"Mark—"

"Don't try to talk," he said gently. "You'll just tire yourself out and we're already running a little long here."

"But I want to," she gasped. "I _need _to."

"Okay," he nodded, "but you know we'll have plenty of time later," he lied facilely.

"No," she said, barely a whisper, "we won't. Well, maybe the occasional internal dialog, that'll be about it."

"I know." He hung his head.

She reached out with one pale hand, stroking the side of his cheek tenderly. "I never even got a decent love scene with you. I'm not even sure how we got Matt."

Mark flushed furiously, glancing out of the corner of his eye toward the judge, standing just to his side. "_Kath_, maybe we _should _save that for an internal dialog."

"Like I don't know where kids come from," Hardcastle said impatiently.

"I just want you to know," Kathy said breathily, on the verge of ellipses, "that I'm sorry it didn't work out. I really only wanted the best for you. I knew the job was dangerous when I took it, and I don't regret a minute of it, even though I did log a lot of frequent flier miles."

The monitor above the bed was emitting faster beeps, now strangely syncopated. Her eyes had slipped closed and her hand dropped to the bed, where Mark picked it up, looking around momentarily for a way to reattach it.

The long, steady beep took them both by surprise.

"That's it, kiddo," Hardcastle said solemnly.

"'It'?" McCormick looked distraught. "You mean they aren't going to—"

"It'd kind of ruin the moment, dontcha think?"

Mark had to nod in agreement, standing slowly but bowing to the inevitable in sudden, heavy sorrow.

"I just don't know, Judge," he said softly, "how I can go on."

Hardcastle edged away, giving him a gentle pat on the arm but staying out of reach.

"You'll be okay. We'll go fishing. You'll put the Volvo up on blocks. We'll go after some bad guys. It'll be like the old days." He smiled in false cheerfulness. "It's how Kathy would've wanted it."

"Yeah," Mark nodded in sad resignation, sighing one last time. "Let's go get some Chinese."


End file.
